


cigarettes and riots.

by nebulousviolet



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andreil, M/M, One-Shot, andrew binghamton pov, angst with slight happiness, but could possibly gain a part two, ends with him meeting neil, i had to hint at renison sorry, lots of inner monologue, starts with the riot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 01:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10798899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: “Renee,” he acknowledges. “Matt and Neil?”She flashes him a smile, a little too knowing for his taste, then dulls.“Matt’s being kept behind a while longer,” she explains. “We-I didn’t see Neil there. There’s another hospital nearby that he could’ve been taken to.”Andrew doesn’t care about Neil being in another hospital. He knows, with blinding clarity, that he will not be there. Matt would’ve made sure where he was if that was the case. Neil is gone.---or, Andrew and Binghamton featuring his constant inner monologue.





	cigarettes and riots.

**Author's Note:**

> no beta, editing or fact checking we die like men.
> 
> written in a day just to prove to myself i'm capable of writing characters i haven't visited since august.
> 
> tw for swearing bc andrew, vague references to psychosis meds and ofc andrew choking kevin.
> 
> (dedicated to phoebe and josiah, who are probably reading this if they're still stalking me. i hope they aren't, but just in case.)

_“Thank you,” Neil said. “You were amazing.”_

Andrew Minyard does not feel. It’s in the promise he makes to himself - letting himself feel for people is a violation of the carefully-tempered mask he has learned to cultivate.

So why the fuck do the words keep echoing in his brain, ominous to the last second, when Neil goes missing in the damn riot?

No, he corrects, Neil isn’t missing. If Neil was missing, that’d mean Renee, Dan and Allison were too, because they aren’t present either. But they’re bundled up with sprains and bruises in some ambulance, so logic dictates that Neil must be in a hospital too. After all, he’s five foot three, can’t throw a punch for shit and is the starting striker. It makes sense for him to be with them, especially since Matt treats him like a younger brother.

 _And yet_ , a small voice in the back of his head whispers, poisonous and using his eidetic memory against him as he leans against the bus, waiting for the other Foxes to return from their jaunts to the ER. _Neil is a runner, Neil’s locker has been filled with blood, Neil_ -

He shakes his head to clear the thought, and lights up, ignoring the dirty look Kevin sends him. Kevin, he notes, looks distressed too, but Andrew dismisses it as the worries of an exy junkie obsessed with making it to finals and anxious that an injury will sideline someone. So he blows cigarette smoke in lazy rings, ignoring the throbbing on his cheekbone where some asshole had tried to elbow him out of the way. He’d let the blow slide to make an example of him, but it’s beginning to really ache like a bitch, and he half-wants to go back into the riot to find the douchebag who gave him it and break his jaw.

(He also wants to go back into the mayhem for another reason, but Andrew’s gotten good at ignoring feelings he doesn’t like.)

Nicky emerges a minute or so later, pulled along by Aaron, looking battered but fine enough. For a half-moment, he hopes it’s enough for him to shut the fuck up and let him smoke in peace, but evidently not, because his cousin opens his mouth and Andrew is too fucking tired for this.  
“Have you seen Neil?” he asks, and his heart thuds at the question. He did not want to hear this, because this implies that even with a height advantage, Neil isn’t to be seen.  
“Do I look like I care?” Andrew responds, but his careful apathy is tinged with anger. Nicky takes it as the ‘no’ that it is, but he finds that he can no longer enjoy his cigarette without thinking of that fucking ginger asshole, and his stupid blue eyes and insolent mouth.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he finds himself realising, but he won’t admit to himself what ‘this’ is, because he’s not a traitor, but mostly because he has never entertained this as a possibility before. And he never will, he decides, clamping down on the obnoxious panic and converting it into anger, a far more familiar and managable force.

“How,” Andrew drawls, letting the cigarette burn to a filter between his fingers. “Do we manage to lose half a fucking team in the space of ten minutes?”  
“They’re not lost,” Abby assures, all kind smiles and dimples. Andrew doesn’t even trust her as far as he can throw her. “Allison, Renee and Matt are all in the local ER, Dan’s been seen by two of you, and Neil was with that security guard. We’ll be able to leave in an hour.”

 _Was_ , some vestule of his brain echoes ominously, and he is getting tired of feeling, especially when he’s in unfamiliar territory and about ten seconds away from throwing someone out a window.  
“What are you doing?” Kevin asks, starting when he reaches for his phone. It gains him an unimpressed look from Andrew.  
“A phone,” he says very slowly, enunciating the word like he’s speaking to a small child. “You can use it to-”  
“I _know_ what a phone is,” Kevin bristles, slowly grating on him. “Who are you calling?”  
“Three guesses,” he answers, pressing on Neil’s number and raising the phone to his ear. It rings out, long and laboured, for a minute, then two. Andrew feels a slight chill go through him. Neil always keeps his phone in his exy bag, doesn’t know how to turn off a phone and would never leave said bag behind. And it’s definitely charged - a pleasant change, but it makes shivers go up his spine, because Neil never has his phone charged unless he has an agenda.

He’s running, something hisses in the back of his mind, and his stomach drops. Too late, he realises Kevin is looking at him with expectation, and he forces himself to scowl.  
“Phone’s on,” he informs. “Makes a fucking change. Didn’t pick up.”

Kevin looks vaguely nauseous, and turns to Abby and Wymack, who are pointedly ignoring them.   
“How far are we from Baltimore?” he asks, and it’s such a strange question that Andrew feels his stomach roll. He _knows_ something, he can tell by his nervous posture, and the idea of Neil telling Kevin something and not him makes him want to break something. They trade in truths and mind games, him and Neil, but Kevin has seemingly gotten something for free.

The feeling within is jealousy, some part of him labels, but beyond that is sheer rage. Rage at Kevin, rage at Wymack, rage at Neil. Except, it’s not really at Neil. It never has been.

“About four hours,” Wymack checks, and Kevin looks like he’s about to vomit.

They stand like that for a little while, waiting for the others to appear. Andrew scans the diminishing crowd for red hair and a number four, and comes up short again, again, _again_. Even he can begin to admit that the rise and fall, the roll and boil of anxiety in his gut and chest is pointed at the noticeable absence of a certain liar, a particular Fox.

He hasn’t hated himself properly in a long while, but he thinks if they can’t find Neil, the hatred will come crashing back twice as heavy as before. That’s unhealthy, he knows, for the only person who can save him is himself, but he has grown used to having stupid comments and a too-soft mouth at his ear. If he loses it all, he knows what he’s missing, and it’ll be harder to feign coldness.

“Andrew,” Renee says, soft and sweet. Her arm is braced, knuckles bruised, and Allison hovers beside her momentarily, as if she’s been stumbling before. Andrew shoots her a glare, and Allison disappears, though seemingly of her own will, in a whirlwind of perfect blonde braids and bruises.  
“Renee,” he acknowledges. “Matt and Neil?”

She flashes him a smile, a little too knowing for his taste, then dulls.  
“Matt’s being kept behind a while longer,” she explains. “We-I didn’t see Neil there. There’s another hospital nearby that he could’ve been taken to.”

Andrew doesn’t care about Neil being in another hospital. He knows, with blinding clarity, that he will not be there. Matt would’ve made sure where he was if that was the case. Neil is gone.

He begins to sprint, searching and scanning the last remaining dregs of the crowd and the court. It’s on his second sweep that he finds it; a battered orange duffel, a slightly-scratched up exy racquet. _He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s-_

Andrew resists the urge to dry-heave, because he has never showed weakness in public before and is not about to start. Violently, he forces the duffel open, and wants to retch again. Neil’s shitty flip-phone, silver and sleek, beeping. With shaking hands, he opens it to find the single message: _0_.

Countdown, some part of him adds cheerfully, and Andrew thumbs through to find more in the recently deleted bin, more numbers slowly descending. He’s gone, he realises. Non-consensually, but gone. He gathers up the phone, the bag, the racquet, tells himself that this meant nothing anyway, and lurches towards Renee. She’s still contemplative as ever, fingers laced together, pastel hair the one bright spot in this seemingly-damning landscape. Looking up, she waves, an effort that must burn her bruised fingers, but her face falls when she notices what he’d carrying. She taps Dan gently on the shoulder, nods at Andrew, then walks towards him.

“It’s not your fault,” Renee says simply. And perhaps it is that easy.

(Except it isn’t because Neil made him release his promise, made him relinquish his protection, made him do things with his mouth and his stupid pretty eyes and it’s much too late to back out now.)

“Andrew,” Dan interrupts, uncharacteristically soft, face rampant with worry. “We will find him. One way or another.”

Andrew ignores the idea that ‘another’ would be in a body bag, and remembers the strange look and questions Kevin had been sporting. He checks his watch - they’ve been there a good two hours, but it feels like a lifetime since Neil left. If Kevin was right about Baltimore, Neil would be halfway there.

He’s tired of waiting for answers. Striding on the bus, up to Kevin, he cocks his head, wondering if he will give up what he knows for free. Not that it matters. Andrew wants to burn the world.

“Kevin,” he drawls, lighting up another cigarette, either his third or his fourth, not caring for specifics. “Where the fuck is he?”  
“What?” Kevin’s jumpy and definitely, definitely lying. “I don’t know. If I did I’d be chewing him out right now.”

Somehow, Andrew doesn’t doubt that, but he can’t shake the feeling that Kevin knows something. Breaking a promise, he decides, is worth it if Neil shows up alive.  
“Last chance,” he warns, though he knows his voice is more apathetic than anything else despite his anger.

Kevin doesn’t say anything, so he decides that he may as well be useless. Andrew does not like useless things.

He leans over, lack of height giving him advantage as he wraps his hands around Kevin’s throat and squeezes. It feels satisfying to finally do something, to finally act when Kevin’s been irritating him all night. Unfortunately, all satisfaction is immediately gone when Renee, Wymack and Nicky rush over to forcibly pull him off.  
“Tell me,” he snarls, fighting to be seen as Renee tries to make him sit down and Matt and Dan lead Kevin away. “Tell me, or if anything happens to him I’ll fucking tear your throat out myself. That’s a fucking promise, Day.”  
“I-I promised-”  
Anger rears its ugly head again, and Renee pushes down with more force than before as he attempts to struggle back up.  
“Your promises don’t mean shit if he’s in a fucking body bag,” Andrew hisses, and there is a quiet within him.

He’s acknowledged it.

He almost wants to die again.

“I don’t know all of it,” Kevin says haltingly, pressing a hand to his throat cautiously. Andrew’s fingerprints will be embedded for the rest of the week - good, a particularly vindictive part of him thinks. “And I didn’t find out that long ago.”  
“Tick-tock,” Andrew says savagely, but Renee senses the fight has gone out of him, and she lets go. He doesn’t appreciate Renee quite enough. “We’re waiting.”

Wymack takes his cue too, and starts the engine, forcing everyone into seats. Renee sits primly next to him at the front, for once, toying with the cross at her neck in a way that could look absent if you didn’t know everything she did was deliberate.   
“Neil’s parents aren’t really dead,” Kevin says, looking at his hands like that will save him from Andrew’s wrath. “The same way his name isn’t really Neil, but you probably figured that. He’s called Nathaniel Wesninski.”

And so it begins and ends like that, Kevin telling them about Neil’s father being a crime lord and a butcher. Butcher of Baltimore, Andrew’s mind echoes, smug. Neil is being sent to Baltimore. Neil is going to die, most likely.

Later, when the others are dozing and Renee has moved to lay her head on Allison’s shoulder, Kevin looks at him and says,  
“You knew a half-version, didn’t you?”

Andrew doesn’t answer. Perhaps if he stays still long enough, his demons will pop out of his skull and do the talking for him.

They’re nearly at Baltimore when they get the call: Neil is in intensive care, Neil’s father was murdered in a shootout, Neil has been _found_.

Andrew expects joy to leap forth, to replace the dull ache in his chest and between his ribs, but to no avail. It’s when the others are piling into a motel room, being taken away for witness statements and questioning, that he decides what it is.

It’s uncertainty.

Uncertainty, because all the FBI will tell them is that Neil is alive. Uncertainty, because Andrew doesn’t know how bad the damage. Uncertainty, because Andrew has learned to uncertain with things he wants to keep. He learned that lesson with Cass.

“Andrew Minyard?”

He makes his statement; resists the urge to call Neil a fucking idiot. That won’t help either of them, he knows. So he forces himself to be perfectly fucking civil, for Neil’s sake at least.

A few more hours pass, lazy things like dust motes that hold no real interest to him. Until, of course, the FBI call, telling them to meet at so and so, in order to speak with Neil. He begged for this arrangement, they say, and that alone manages to bring a small smirk to Andrew’s lips. That will be their way of indirectly calling Neil the stubborn asshole that he is.

Except the fucking bodyguard tasked with making sure they don’t break things irritates him with his casual use of Neil’s name, the real, broken one that Kevin only likes to whisper, so it’s all too easy for him to lunge blindly at his nose, or his balls, or his stomach.

(Andrew firmly believes he went for all three.)

But this is the fucking FBI, so they handcuff him to Wymack, who has the decency to stay as far away from him as their restraints allow, then send him off to move the bus.

So Andrew sits, five foot nothing and vibrating with anger, anticipation, something more than his apathetic haze, and wonders how much he’d have to move to step down on the gas and ram them into a wall so his suffering is over.

(But he’s so close to seeing Neil, so close he can taste it, so he perches and grumbles and glares at all the badly-concealed plainclothes officers swarming them.)

“Minyard,” Wymack says suddenly, as they manoeuvre out and along the corridor. Andrew levels him a glare, an act that should be charged, angry, but even he can feel how devoid of anything his stare has become. “I think he’s here.”

It’s all he needed to hear; Andrew bolts upstairs, dragging a protesting Wymack with him as he channels any and all energy left to Neil, Neil, Neil. He isn’t meant to be this attached, a warning bell reminds him, but for once he just doesn’t fucking care. It’s freeing, being able to act so narrow-mindedly, but it’s also what put him on mandatory anti-psychosis medication, so Andrew pauses to let his coach catch up a little before bolting off at a breakneck pace again.

It’s only when he sees Neil, clutching bandaged hands to his stomach, the clang of the door still ringing in his ears, that the ache dissapates.

It’s not happiness that replaces it, he finds. It’s in the tilt of Neil’s jaw, in the gauze and the gaze and the glare of too-bright lights.

He is _home_ , and Andrew has not been home in such a long time.

(Home is followed by anger, by steel, by apathy and something that could be dangerously close to protectiveness if Andrew developed on it. But home is the primary emotion, and he lets it wash over him. Just for a moment, before hell has time to break loose again.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> oh god im gonna reread and find so many errors. also theres like 7 million references to other shit i like in here. all of them are like 90% unintentional im sorry broadway has been dragging me down.
> 
> stalk me on tumblr for broadway and tfc content: vvorkangelica


End file.
